Why #Apple is making a $10,000+ smart watch, the reason nobody seams to be talking about.

Apple is the first company to make $10,000+ dollar version of its smart watch (that I know of) called the Apple Watch "edition". This has generated quite a buzz in the media and also with the apple haters jumping into full swing with memes like “a $10,000 watch? Apple just went full retard, never go full retard.”.

Now, I not big on opinionated posts (my blog is more to help others find solutions to tech problems)… but I have an opinion on this that people don’t seam to be talking about: Apple is making a $10,000 smart watch because they seam to be the only ones smart enough to know; they HAVE TO.

I’ve been in marketing for over twenty years and it occurs to me that anyone who wants to be capture the smart watch market needs to appeal to the entirety of it. There is a definitive market for luxury watches and largely because of the size of a watch, it's impractical put it in an external luxury case. If you wrapped a smart watch in a gold case, it would look enormous on your wrist.

So who is buying luxury watches? we'll, quite simply, anyone with enough money that price doesn't come into question; and here's the thing: Of the people who have enough money to pay for such a device, one subset is people who have accumulated wealth due to their own successes. Musicians, Actors, Sports people and a myriad of skilled professionals who have impacted the world so much that they have been rewarded with wealth.

People who have earned wealth through exceptional execution of their talent command respect. It's why companies sponsor famous people and marketers fight to get them to wear their wares (ok, you can see I'm not a writer).

I'm sure Apple realises that this is a very important part of the watch market it cannot exclude. It has in fact, no real choice (which is my point) than to make a device that is compelling enough to be acceptable at the $10,000 price point and good enough to be seen on the wrists of this target market.

Another reason Apple wants to be the first on these wrists is that whole sticky ecosystem thing. Apple had to make a luxury watch to achieve this and to lock it it as the watch worn by the best. Simply making an expensive watch wasn't enough, it had to make a watch WORTHY of this market (as well as the rest of us!). Did you ever stop to think that the Apple Watch will be exceptional because Tim Cook and Sir Johnny Ive will be pretty much forced to wear it always?

Now that the Apple Watch is available, we will start to see people reporting who is wearing one and I'm sure that there will be a symbiance of exposure for both Apple and the wearer when this happens.

Look out for "who's wearing the Apple Watch" coming to a publication near you.